Sequencing the human genome and recent advances in the field of bioinformatics suggests that medicine of the future will take advantage of genomic data. For example, researchers and health care providers anticipate the ability to design drugs or at least screen a variety of drugs based upon the drug's ability to bind to a protein coded for by a patient's gene sequence. In order for this vision to become a reality, a tight linkage is necessary between a patient's personal genomic and expression data and a patient's medical records and the ability to access those records.
In addition, the Internet is already widely used to obtain medical information. Medical data are among the most retrieved information over the Internet, estimated at about 34–43%. With a projection of one billion individuals on the Internet by the year 2005, new challenges will be presented in efficiently transporting such volumes of medical and genomic data. Computers and the Internet are also being utilized more and more frequently for data mining of genomic sequences. This increased volume will demand more efficient way to forward genomic information and other information related thereto.
Conventional methods of electronically transmitting genomic data forward the data as unstructured text. For example, in order to transmit a DNA sequence electronically, the sequence first needs to be translated into a series of letters of the alphabet which represent the various DNA bases, i.e., A G T C. These letters of the alphabet must, in turn, be converted into a binary code in order to be transmitted and read electronically as ASCII text. Upon receipt, the code must be translated into the various letters of the alphabet which can represent the DNA sequence. This transmission of a DNA sequence as ASCII text can cause such transmissions to be unnecessarily slow and more prone to errors and unauthorized access. In addition, such conventional systems are unable to incorporate clinical information or annotation along with the genomic information.
Accordingly, a need exists for an improved method for transferring data that includes a genomic sequence in a data processing system and making the genomic data efficiently and safely miscible with other required information.